choose your words carefully

Transparency is an important (well, crucial) part of responsible leadership, so is trust. In the center of both is communication. Although not a post about communication per se, one important issue came to my mind when reading this about framing.

The concept is that what you say affects what someone hears (obviously); but its not that simple. Of course, what you don't say also affects what someone hears, what order you say things affect how the brain interprets what is says, how you stress certain words affects the emphasis that is placed on words and so on... In fact, spare a thought for the fact that non-native speakers of a language may not pick up most of the aspects of the communication (emphasis, slight difference in meaning between say 'large' or 'massive' etc) and will thus misunderstand you. In fact, this also applies to people with different accents -so communication affects everyone and everything you do.

As a person communicating to another, you must try to accurately convey your message and take into account these externalities. Any good public speaker or someone used to speaking to foreign audiences will have experience in this. In a leadership role, how you communicate is even more important, since the message may have large implications. And you may be communicating by sound, by letter, by action, by video...

Have a thought about how you can communicate your message effectively, and always bear in mind how people will interpret it: how can you convey your message most effectively: what media should you use?, how long should the message be?, what words/sounds/images should you use? do you need to repeat yourself or speak slower? what choice of words should you use?

Remember how many times ineffective communication has made a difference when you were on the receiving end. Its your responsibility to make sure when you want to be an effective leader, you communicate well.